Hostage Diary: `I Thought I Was Dead`

As night closed over the plane, Toga feigned sleep in an attempt to avoid his captor`s taunts, but it was ineffective. ``These guys would come up to you when you were sleeping and stick a gun in your ear,`` he said.

As the plane was beginning its descent into Beirut again, Toga said, the soothing voice of Uli Derickson came on the public-address system with some not-so-soothing words.

``She said: `Prepare for an emergency landing,` `` Toga recalled.

What Toga didn`t know was that the runway at the Beirut airport had been blocked to prevent the plane from landing.

``Some time later the captain came on and said: `They have removed the blockade. It will be a normal landing.` ``

The plane touched down at 2:20 a.m., safely. But on the ground Derickson made another announcement, the most ominous of the ordeal.

``She said, `You will hear some noise. Don`t look up or it will be your fate,` `` Toga remembered.

Suddenly, there was a sound like a ``little pop.`` It was a gunshot and Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, 23, of Waldorf, Md., lay dead.

Stethem`s body was dumped unceremoniously on the tarmac, where it remained in the darkness until Red Cross officials were allowed to retrieve it.

``I was very much aware they killed the guy,`` Toga said. ``I knew he was dead. It was one of the long periods (of the ordeal).``

Sometime in the hours before dawn, Toga said, eight heavily armed men in military shoes clambered aboard the jet, and near dawn they served apples, water and stale cheese sandwiches to the hostages.

Toga ate the apple but couldn`t force down the cheese sandwich. He wondered if it might be his last meal.

The plane took off from Beirut just after daybreak at 5:40 a.m., and once it was in the air the hijacker that Toga nicknamed ``the singer`` grew restless.

``He was walking up and down the aisle, clicking the hammer on his revolver,`` Toga said. ``He knelt down and showed me the gun and said, `Smith and Wesson, Smith and Wesson.`

``It was a five-shot pistol, and he pops open the chamber and removes four of the five rounds. Then he gives the chamber a spin, points the gun at my stomach and pulls the trigger.

``I thought I was a dead man. I thought I was going to meet my Maker.``

That was the first of two gruesome episodes of Russian roulette Toga was to endure. Others on board went through the same torture.

Before one of the games of Russian roulette, ``the singer`` approached Toga and said, ``You CIA, you CIA,`` then pointed a pistol at Toga`s head. Then, with a finger, the hijacker traced the invisible letters CIA on Toga`s forehead.

En route to Algiers the second time, the hijackers stole all the jewelry and money they could find on the remaining 113 passengers and crew members. A few people managed to keep their wedding bands, but most lost everything.

``One of the men in our group was very upset the whole time we were being held because his wife had hidden her jewelry and money in her bra and one (of the hijackers) grabbed it right out of her blouse,`` said Vicente Garza, 53, of Laredo, Tex.

Toga said it was during the second and final approach to Algiers, about 7:45 a.m. local time, that he first learned of the hijackers` demand that Israel release more than 700 Shiite Moslems being held without charge in Israeli prisons.

``Until then, I never knew what they wanted,`` he said.

On the runway in Algiers, Toga said, the hijackers ordered the shades pulled on all the plane`s windows and the lights turned out.

``It was totally silent and as dark as could be,`` said Toga. ``Then all of a sudden (the hijackers) started singing and chanting. It was eerie. I thought it was preparatory to death. I thought it was all over.``

Not long afterward, the passengers learned of the hijackers` latest demands for the freedom of their accomplice, Ali Atwa, who had been left behind in Greece because the TWA flight was full.

Toga said the remaining women were moved to the rear of the airplane and the men to the front while two Algerian officials boarded the plane to negotiate Atwa`s return.

About 2 p.m. Algiers time, a Greek airplane arrived with Atwa aboard.

``Everybody on our plane started clapping and cheering,`` Toga said.

A few hours later, 58 more passengers were released.

``Later we were given a political speech and promised we would all be released,`` Toga said. ``They told us the International Red Cross would be coming to see us.``

That night two Red Cross representatives did board the plane--``but nothing came of it, obviously``--and the hijackers allowed the remaining hostages to spread out and sleep. Every man had three seats to himself.

Day 3: Sunday, June 16

The hijackers awakened their hostages in the morning and sat them two to a row in preparation for yet another takeoff. They took off for Beirut at 8:55 a.m. in what was to be their final flight in captivity.